Monday, October 14, 2013

State educators push ahead with preparations

Kentucky educators are pushing ahead with preparations to
implement new Next Generation Science Standards in Kentucky classrooms
by next fall, although the standards' ultimate fate could be up to the
General Assembly.

Gov. Steve Beshear decided last month to
implement the new science requirements even though a legislative review
subcommittee rejected them as "deficient."

While Beshear's move
allows preparations to go forward, legislators could override the
governor and kill the standards when the General Assembly meets in
January.

During the coming months, the Kentucky Department of
Education plans meetings across the state with science educators from
every school district to go over the standards and start planning how to
put them to use by fall 2014.

Officials at Fayette County Public
Schools have selected 14 science teachers and administrators to get
started on the Lexington rollout, said Lu Young, the district's chief
academic officer.

Educators also will be busy "helping to clarify a
lot of the misconceptions about the standards," said Karen Kidwell,
director of program standards for the state education department.

"We're
going forward because we believe, based on feedback from teachers and
the science-education community, that these are the right standards for
Kentucky students," Kidwell said.

The standards establish the
science concepts and skills Kentucky students would be expected to
master in grades K-12. They were drafted cooperatively by Kentucky and
25 other states.

The Kentucky Board of Education has approved the
standards twice, and they've been endorsed by numerous science groups.
Education officials say that most of the approximately 4,000 public
comments they've received about the regulations have been positive.

Opponents,
including some members of the public and such organizations as the
Family Foundation of Kentucky, have attacked the standards on various
grounds. Some argue that the standards treat evolution as fact rather
than theory. Others claim the guidelines overemphasize global climate
issues while ignoring other areas of science.

Last month, two
conservative groups — Take Back Kentucky and Kentuckians Against Common
Core Standards — circulated online alerts urging Kentuckians to contact
state legislators in opposition to the standards. Among other points,
the alerts argued that the new standards would provide for the
"elimination of chemistry and most of physics" in Kentucky schools.

But
the standards provide for no such thing, according to various Kentucky
educators who helped prepare the new requirements during the past three
years.

"As far as eliminating chemistry and physics ... that
couldn't be further from the truth," said David Helm, middle and high
school science specialist for Fayette County Public Schools.

Martin
Brock, an associate professor of chemistry at Eastern Kentucky
University who worked on the standards, said there was no reason to fear
that chemistry or physics would be weakened.

"Topics in the
standards having to do with chemistry and physics — such as heat,
energy, motion and gravitation — are abundant, certainly more abundant
than any climate-related topics, " Brock said. "I can show you places in
the new standards where they significantly raise the bar in chemistry,
physics and others areas. They haven't taken chemistry out; they've made
it better."

But
members of the legislature's Administrative Regulation Review
Subcommittee said they were bombarded with calls and emails from people
opposed to the science regulations. On Sept. 10, subcommittee members
voted 5-1 during a meeting in Frankfort to find the standards deficient.

Sen.
Ernie Harris, R-Prospect, the subcommittee's co-chair, estimated he
received 100 messages opposing the standards and very few supporting
them.

"It was probably 100 to two," he said. "I'm exaggerating, but it was overwhelmingly against the standards."

Sen.
Joe Bowen R-Owensboro, a subcommittee member who voted against the
standards, said he started getting calls and messages blasting the
regulations about two weeks before the subcommittee met.

"A lot of
people may assume this was all about evolution and climate change, and
those issues were brought up by some people," Bowen said. "But the
primary concern was individuals' perception that the standards did not
promote chemistry, and to some extent physics, at the level they thought
should be emphasized. That was a big concern."

Bowen said he and
other subcommittee members suggested deferring action on the standards,
but Kentucky Department of Education representatives declined.
Afterward, subcommittee members thought it "was incumbent upon us" to
find the standards deficient, he said.

"The department passed on
the opportunity to defer action, and I think that was unfortunate,"
Bowen said. "It would have allowed them time to ... put the standards on
display and let the public be exposed to them. Let them try to win over
the public and make the argument that these standards really are what
we need."

Harris said he wasn't convinced by claims that the
standards might eliminate chemistry or physics. He reviewed the
standards and found them lacking, Harris said.

"They appear to be
less rigorous than the standards we have now," he said. "They are
written almost as if they want students to understand the process of
science without understanding the basics of science."

But Brock,
the EKU chemistry professor, said he thought many critics misunderstand
the proposed standards. He also said he thought some critics might be
following "a political agenda."

"In the science standards we have
now, students are expected to know and be able to enumerate Isaac
Newton's three laws of motion," Brock said. "But the new standards say
that students will be able to generate data to show that those laws are
correct.

"That's pushing the capability of students way beyond
simply enumerating a set of laws, to seeing the background by which
those laws are actually true. In any imaginable sense of rigor, that's a
higher standard."

Thomas Tretter, an associate professor of
science education at the University of Louisville, also insisted the new
standards go well beyond what students are expected to learn now.

"I
would claim the new standards are more rigorous because they require
students to not only know words and definitions, but how they all work
together," Tretter said.

Convincing members of the legislature might take a more concerted effort.

Bowen didn't rule out the possibility of a move to overturn the standards when the legislature meets next year.

"I
would say that there are those in the General Assembly that are perhaps
even more motivated than those of us on the subcommittee to push back
on these standards," he said.

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On the campaign trail...with my wife Rita

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Faculty Senate Chair

Serving as Mace Bearer during the Inauguration of Michael T. Benson as EKU's 12th president.

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EDF 203 in EKU's one-room schoolhouse.

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Lecturing on the history of Berea College to Berea faculty and staff, 2014.

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